Search This Blog

Saturday, 25 April 2015

"Behind you!" Shouted Fenwick as the razorfiend lumbered into view, goaded by its attendant grubbers.The acolyte turned to see the massive fists of the creature smashing down towards him.At that moment a swarm of bees burst from the air around the spriggan leaving the swollen bodies of the grubbers writing on the ground. Rolling to one side Fenwick buried an arrow deep into the 'fiend's side causing it to rear up in pain. Perfectly positioning it for the follow-up. Nothing but the arrow's knock could be seen protruding from the creature's thick neck as it toppled like a skillfully felled tree.Rushing to the acolyte's side, she was only in time to hear him murmur his last few words, "the servants of Boabeh always rise again" before the light faded from his eyes Standing over the body of her fallen comrade, pondering his almost sinister sounding pronouncement she turned to the spriggan and asked "where's the Skald?"Staggering from beneath a mound of dead crawlers the Skald lurched toward them "It's too late. The poison..." and the Skald breathed his last.

Act one of the second story quest nearly ended in a TPK. As you can see from the artfully posed picture, however, the ladies saved the day (again), taking out the razorfiend while we sat about and made crude jokes about the acolyte.

In fairness to him, it was frightfully bad luck that we drew a threat 8 darkness card rather than the normal threat 10 as before that he had managed to take out a swathe of minions.

I forgot that the Skald had picked up a poison DoT earlier in the session and when I went back and recounted realised that he should be dead as well.

At the end of the last story the Archer had opted to take the title and used it to retain her blue endless quiver. And boy has that come in handy. The biggest benefit is that she always has enough arrows for a full Orions Tears, which is a great way to clear a tile cluttered up with minions. Added to that, there's almost always ammo available for the other special attacks. Tumble is being used quite a lot for maneuvering, especially as it grants a free shot and doesn't count as a move.

The Skald was an interesting character to play. The play style is completely different from the other characters as all the Skalds actions are resolved at the head of the Hero Cycle. This make him a great choice for anyone who is demoing as their turn is finished before everone else's starts and that frees them up to run the darkness board, check rules etc.

The only negative is that the Skald's abilities could do with an additional point of range. Range 1 and 2 are a bit too close to give good coverage to the party, especially with ranged characters in the mix. The low range can also leave the Skald exposed, and he is a poor melee combatant.

On the painting front, as you can see neither the characters or the mini boss are painted yet. As at time of writing the spriggan is almost finished though and it's only layer coats on the Terror and some basing on the scorpion captains that needs done to complete that set. Once the Terror set is complete I'm going to concentrate on the heroes and then move on in boss order, so it will be Orcneas' troupe of muckers and grubbers that get a lick of paint after that.

Monday, 13 April 2015

Myth Mondays continue with the final act of the first story quest. On the opening tile we went for the rolling boulder trap which was navigated successfully after easily dispatching the limited resistance of a grubber hunting pack. This proved mainly to be an opportunity for the Archer to stack up her Endless Quiver with ammo prior to entering the next section of the map.

The cards fell very nicely for the Acolyte and Brigand over this whole session with both characters being able to pull off their maximum combos at least once. The movement card restriction from the story quest proved to be more annoying than hindering, partly because this is a limited time session so it just made trivial tasks take longer.

This week the Spriggan suffered from the poor draw order that the plagued the brigand in the last session and so it was a relatively unsatisfying session from that player's point of view.

Back to the action and by the time we had made it to the Inn it was absolutely rammed with crawlers, (I think there were about 4 spaces left), due to the automatic spawn on refresh from the story quest. Being well geared, this proved to be less problematic than feared as we activated them in the narrower 6x12 forcing them into a chokepoint. Things nearly came unstuck when the Archer triggered all but one of the pit traps herself, but luck was on our side and so managed to leap from danger every time.

A timely suicide run following a six point Orion's Tears left the Brigand able to set a flame to the carelessly left kindling to clear the quest without having to risk a prolonged snipe at the remaining lair, aided as we were by the timely arrival of our new ally Bobby, who's quest chain we had completed on the way in.

The game looked even better than last week as all the crawler mini's are painted and the captains are now only a single coat away. With any luck I'll find time to post a few pictures of them next post. Next up for painting once the terror set is complete are the heroes and the Orcneas' gang of grubbers and muckers.

"Stop praying! I can see you doing it from here, even though you have your back turned", Fenwick shouted at the Acolyte nocking a third arrow to the string."You need Boabeh! For he smites down all who would mock him" returned the Acolyte grasping his staff more firmly.

As usual, the Brigand was nowhere to be seen and the Spriggan had shed it's leaves and taken root on a clear patch of ground in a semblance of sleep.

"There's no time for rest" called the Acolyte, "the ground is alive with crawlers and we have a vengeance to take. Stay close that my staff might give you succor."

Shaking her head, Fenwick suddenly leapt forward, rolled and buried an arrow into the crawler that a second before had burst from the ground a few yards from where the party had stopped to take stock. At the same time a swarm of bees buzzsawed angrily through the air to leave a second and third writhing on the ground while the Spriggan looked on impassively .